looking for opinions on this German Belt Buckle does it look to be original or not ? made of steel marked RZM 36/42 and SS. Thanks Tim
So the difference is that the real one has cast/raised markings, whereas the dodgy one has punched? (Appreciate this is a minefield, just curious.)
Could anyone please explain what differences I should look for? Can't see any apart from some rust...
I may be missing something more obvious, but the biggest differences seem to the the asymmetry of the RZM's M and the longer top stroke of the first S of SS on the original.
In a nutshell Adam. Apparently a hord of about 50 originals were found and sold very fast to those collecters of such memorabilia, but as usual someone thought that they could produce replicas, which apparently were churned out in Eastern Europe and the rest is history so to speak. Always someone out there willing to cheat and take a lot of money from unsuspecting customers. They do look well weathered but the stamped letters and numbers let it down. Hope that helps thinking of purchasing these types of items. Regards Tom
Are they really raised? Or is the brain being fooled by a light source below the buckle (cf. air photo interpretation)? Why would rust form on the raised part with 'polished' metal beside it? (Apologies if I'm being thick this morning.)
I agree. I think the original buckles were entirely stamped. Why would the the eagle and crest be cast in relief on the back side of the buckle? Looks like it was stamped in from the back like the numbers on a car license plate.
And here we see, once again, why German militaria has spawned several 'spotting the fakes' books... How much does an SS buckle go for these days? Timed it just wrong when I last fancied a Heer Gott Mit Uns one - no longer £10-20. Oo-er. Googled SS buckles. Yeah. That'll trigger a fake market.
This whole discussion makes one feel even better to be collecting just "ordinary" British infantry items...
In the 1980's I had the pleasure of meeting a former British Army Captain in Occupied Germany - 1946-47. Great effort was put into keeping the population busy and rebuilding an economy to promote de-nazification. British Officers were given responsibility to get former factories working - he got a die stamping factory. Between legitimate work they were using wartime (supposedly destroyed) dies to knock out 'restrikes' of the whole gamut of German medals and badges. These were sold to comrades as battle relics. They even assembled display boards of sets. Ex-servicemen provided 'authentic' issue marks. Apparently similar things happened in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland....
As an aside. I am always a bit wary of these posts - If I was wanting to see if my forging skills were up to scratch - I can think of nothing better (and safer) than to post an image on this type of board with "what do you people think of this" and see what needs refining.....